Few people know that Alexander Calder designed a sidewalk in front of
1014-1018 Madison Ave. between 78 and 79th streets. Calder's gallery
was in the building and three galleries split the installation cost of
the sidewalk. The sidewalk is a few blocks up from the Whitney Museum
where you can see Calder's Circus. The Whitney has a great display of
the Circus and they run the Calder's Circus video. I used to teach a
wire sculpture project and would show the students the video before
they started their wire sculptures. The more I saw the video the more
I realized that Calder was an early performance artist. Calder would
perform the Circus in Paris and New York in the late 1920s and 1930s.
The Cicus is usually mentioned as Calder's link to kinetic art but the
performance aspect if overlooked. If you get a chance to see the video
do.

The reason I mention Calder is that I thought of him while watching
Junebum Park's video entitled Parking at the Projected Realities,
Video Art from East Asia exhibition at Asia Society. In the video a
hand, the artist's I presume, appears to be moving cars in and out of
a parking space. The video is a composite of the hand and actual cars
going in and out of parking spaces. In a sense, Junebum Park, was
manipulating the cars the way Calder manipulated the circus figures. I
was very impressed with Park's work. Park's pieces are short and
imaginative. Click here to read a review of his work and see stills
from his video.

BTW the exhibition was dedicated to Nam June Paik

For an image of the sidewalk and links to things mentioned above see my blog.